Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Tbilisi today

This morning I wanted to join a UN aid mission to check on the humanitarian situation and to deliver food to Akhalgori, an Ossetian town some 50km northwest of Tbilisi, inhabited by “Georgian” Ossetians… Just when we wanted to get on the cars, the UN got news that the Russian army is moving in and the villagers are fleeing. The trip was called off as it was considered to be too dangerous.

More and more it becomes apparent why there have been these delays in the withdrawal of the Russian army. (NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed some consternation and astonishment about the delay in the withdrawal yesterday after the meeting of the North Atlantic council).

It seems that the Russians want to establish a generous buffer zone south of the former South Ossetian borders, which includes “proper” Georgian territory. The Russians will most probably want to control this buffer zone via Russian “peace keeper” troops after the official withdrawal which is scheduled for this Friday…

One cannot but feel a sense of helplessness, incensement and dismay about such blatant injustice and complete disregard of humanitarian principles…

So this afternoon, I went to another UN run centre for displaced persons (which incidentally used to be a Russian “генштаб” general headquarter) a bit further out of Tbilisi. I wanted to make some sense of the abstract number 127,000 of displaced persons… that number does not mean anything unless you can put faces and stories on at least a few of them…

Portrait of Lia and Leila, two sisters from K, Abkhazia. Their houses were bombed by Russian planes; they fled and were brought to Tbilisi by the Georgian army. It is unlikely that they will ever be able to go back…

Portrait of Vera, her son Joni and her mother from Gori. They expect to be able to go back when the Russians have withdrawn.